Every Bathroom Tells a Story

I'm thankful for this:

Once, many years ago, I got a phone call from a friend in Florida, asking what size toilet we had. I was wondering whether to be offended, but a few weeks later a toilet seat that looked like a piece of art showed up. It was translucent, with shells and seahorses and coral embedded in the most beautiful blue liquid acrylic. Our toilet became a must-see. (Sorry, no photos... I've had data loss...)

Somewhere around that time I was visiting a friend who had the most amazing, iconic 1970s sink in his bathroom. I joked: "Can I have it?" An incredibly sweet Indian man, Hussein said yes. Twelve years later, we ran into his family at the food court. "I still have your sink," he said. We had been talking about a bathroom remodel since we moved in to this house 18 years ago. We bought him a replacement sink, and one day this beauty showed up on our doorstep.

It's a true treasure, carved straight from of a bar of Irish Spring. Actually, there is a label still stuck on it, under the sink, that reads "Monolav" and a date, 2/72. There is a thread of gold sand that runs through the marbling, that looks magical in the right light.

By now the blue toilet seat, unfortunately, was long gone... the hinges had rusted through, and it had even lived through an incarnation as a Dan Caven illuminated art piece. Pictures of that are, sadly, gone, but imagine this gorgeous toilet seat hanging on the wall against a translucent white sheet of glass, glowing with light. Lift up the toilet seat and you will find a ten-inch silver ball hanging inside, made from the thousands of rubber bands brought home to me daily each time my husband thought of me, a memento of the four years he worked in a book warehouse.

Sadly, this beautiful artwork leapt off the wall in an earthquake. And the toilet seat you see in this picture is but a memento of the one that would match the sink. But it still looks great! I also love the sandy floor and the brushed nickel fixtures and the plants.

I went shopping for the perfect color for the walls, and I found it. It was called "Tsunami," which is a worrisome name for a paint you put in the bathroom, but gravity intervened and there was a small tsunami of blue paint in the Home Depot parking lot. In the end, I painted a dark shade of blue called "Deep Breath" over a beautiful teal called "Carribean Currents."


Now every trip to the loo is like a tropical vacation.